Fort Ripley, MN
Fort Ripley wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Fort Ripley at the 65th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 102 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Fort Ripley at the 63rd percentile, close to its 65th-percentile risk score.
Where Fort Ripley's buildings actually sit
Of Fort Ripley's 102 counted buildings, 82.4% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Fort Ripley ranks
Fort Ripley's 90th-percentile standing inside Minnesota outpaces its 65th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fort Ripley ranks 11,123 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,954 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 93 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Fort Ripley and the insurance market
Fort Ripley's high rating (65th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Fort Ripley (82.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Fort Ripley's 11,123-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Fort Ripley, see the exposure-zones guide.